Eventsare moving at a pace which can only be called revolutionary. Four days
ago, in discussing the election campaign in St. Petersburg, we wrote that the
political alignment was already clear: revolutionary Social-Democracy alone had
independently, resolutely, and proudly unfurled the banner of relentless
struggle against the violence of reaction and the hypocrisy of the liberals. The
petty-bourgeois democrats (including the petty-bourgeois section of the
workers’ party) were wavering, turning now to the liberals, now to the
revolutionary Social-Democrats.

InSt. Petersburg the elections to the Duma take place today. Their results
cannot affect the alignment of social forces we have already indicated. And
yesterday’s elections, which have accounted for 217 of the 524 members,
i.e., more than two-fifths, are a clear indication of the political composition
of the Second Duma, a clear indication of the political situation which is
developing before our eyes.

Accordingto Rech, which, of course, is inclined to paint a picture
favourable to the Cadets, the 205 members already elected to the Duma are
distributed as follows: Rights, 37;
National-Autonomists,[2] 24; Cadets, 48; Progressists and non-party, 16;
non-party Lefts, 40; Narodniks, 20 (13 Trudoviks, 6
Socialist-Revolutionaries, and 1 Popular Socialist); and 20
Social-Democrats.

Wehave before us a Duma that is undoubtedly more Left than the previous one. If
the rest of the elections yield similar results we shall have the following
round figures
for 500 members of the Duma: Rights, 90; Nationalists, 50; Cadets, 125;
Progressists, 35; non-party Lefts, 100; Narodniks, 50; Social-Democrats,
50. It goes without saying that this is only an approximate estimate made
for the sake of illustration, but there can hardly be any doubt of the
correctness of these totals.

TheRights constitute one-fifth; the moderate liberals (the liberal-monarchist
bourgeoisie, including the Nationalists, Cadets, and some, if not all,
Progressists)—two fifths; the Lefts—two-fifths (non-party,
one-fifth, and Narodniks and Social-Democrats sharing equally the other
fifth)—such is the make-up of the Second Duma as it appears to us on the
basis of the preliminary returns.

Whatdoes this mean?

Themost savage and shameless tyranny of the Black-Hundred government, which is
the most reactionary in Europe. The most reactionary election law in all
Europe. The most revolutionary popular representative body in Europe in the
most backward country!

Thisglaring contradiction clearly reveals the fundamental contradiction in the
whole of contemporary Russian life, reveals to the full the revolutionary
character of the present day.

Tworevolutionary years have elapsed since the great day of January 9, 1905. We
have experienced long and painful periods of savage reaction. We have
experienced brief “bright intervals” of liberty. We have experienced
two great popular outbreaks of strikes and armed struggle. We have experienced
one Duma and two general elections, which definitely determined the alignment of
parties and caused an extremely sharp alignment among the population, which
until recently had no conception of political parties whatsoever.

Duringthese two years, we have grown out of our faith— naïve in some and
crudely selfish in others—in the unity of the liberation movement, and
have cast off many illusions of peaceful constitutional methods; we have gained
experience in mass forms of struggle and have reached a point where we must
employ the most stern and extreme method of struggle conceivable—that of
the armed struggle of one part of the population against the other. The bourgeoisie
and the landlords, have become fierce and brutal. The man in the street
is weary. The Russian intellectual is limp and despondent. The party of liberal
windbags and liberal traitors, the Cadets, has raised its head, hoping to make
capital out of the prevailing weariness born of the revolution, and claiming as
its hegemony what is really its readiness, like
Famusov,[3] to go to the utmost limits of obsequiousness.

Butbelow, deep down among the proletarian masses and among the mass of the
destitute, starving peasantry, the revolution has made headway, quietly and
imperceptibly undermining the foundations, rousing the most somnolent with the
thunder of civil war, galvanising the most lethargic with the rapid changes
from “liberties” to bestial tyranny, from calm to parliamentary
excitement, elections, mass meetings, and feverish “union” activity.

Asa result we have a new, even more Left Duma, and in prospect we have a new,
even more formidable and more unmistakable revolutionary crisis.

Eventhe blind must now see that it is a revolutionary and not a constitutional
crisis that lies ahead of us. There can be no doubt about that. The days of the
Russian constitution are numbered. A new clash is inexorably approaching either
the revolutionary people will be victorious, or the Second Duma will disappear
as ingloriously as the First, followed by the repeal of the election law and a
return to the Black-Hundred absolutism sans phrases.

Howpetty our recent “theoretical” controversies have suddenly
become in the glaring light of the rising sun of revolution! Are not the plaints
of the miserable, frightened and faint-hearted intellectuals about the
Black-Hundred danger in the elections ridiculous? Have not events brilliantly
confirmed what we said in November (Proletary No. 8):
“By their outcry against the Black-Hundred danger, the Cadets are leading
the Mensheviks by the nose in order to avert the danger from the
Left”?[1]

Revolutionis a good teacher. It forces back on to the revolutionary track those
who are continually going astray either from weakness of character or weakness
of intellect.
The Mensheviks wanted blocs with the Cadets, unity in the
“opposition”, the opportunity to “utilise the Duma as a
whole”. They did everything possible (and impossible too, to the
extent of splitting the Party, as was the case in St. Petersburg) to
create an all-liberal Duma.

Nothingcame of it. The revolution is stronger than opportunists of little
faith think. Under the hegemony of the Cadets, the revolution can only lie prone
in the dust—it can triumph only under the hegemony of the Bolshevik
Social-Democrats.

TheDuma is turning out to be exactly as we depicted it in our polemic with the
Mensheviks in Proletary, No. 8 (November 1906). It is a Duma of sharp
extremes, a Duma in which the moderate and cautious mean has been swept away by
the revolutionary torrent, a Duma of
Krushevans[4] and of the revolutionary people. The Bolshevik
Social-Democrats will raise their banner in this Duma and say to the masses
of the petty-bourgeois democrats what they said to them during the
St. Petersburg elections: make your choice between Cadet haggling with the
Stolypins, and joint struggle in the ranks of the people! We, the
proletariat of all Russia, are marching to that struggle. All who want
freedom for the people, and land for the peasants, follow us!

TheCadets already feel that the wind has changed, that the political barometer
is falling rapidly. It is not surprising that the Milyukovs have lost their
nerve and, casting off all shame, have started howling—in the
street—about “red rags” (in the sanctums of the Stolypins
these creatures have always secretly abused the “red rag”). It is
not surprising that today’s Rech (February 7) refers to the
“jumps” in the political barometer, to the government’s
vacillation “between the resignation of the Cabinet and some kind of
pronunciamento, action by the Black Hundreds and the military, the very date of
which has been fixed for the 14th”. And the desolated soul of the Russian
liberal Wails and sighs: What, again a “policy of spontaneous reflexes...”.

Yes,miserable heroes of miserably stagnant times! Revolution again! We
gladly welcome the approaching wave of the people’s spontaneous wrath. But
we shall do all in
our power to make this new struggle as little spontaneous and as conscious,
consistent, and steadfast as possible.

Thegovernment set all the wheels of its machine in motion long ago: violence,
pogroms, barbarous atrocities, deception and stultification. And now all these
wheels have come loose; everything has been tried, even the shelling of villages
and towns. The popular forces are not exhausted; on the contrary, they are now
forming more and more widely, powerfully, openly and boldly. A Black-Hundred
autocracy and—a Left Duma. The situation is undoubtedly a revolutionary
one, and a struggle in the most acute form is undoubtedly inevitable.

Butit is precisely because of its inevitability that we must not force the
pace, spur or goad it on. Leave that to the Krushevans and Stolypins. Our task
is to reveal the truth to the proletariat and the peasantry clearly,
directly and with unsparing candour, to open their eyes to the significance of
the coming storm, to help them to meet the enemy in organised fashion, with the
calmness of men marching to death, like soldiers in the trenches facing the foe,
and ready at the first shots to dash into the attack.

“Shootfirst, Messrs. Bourgeois!” said Engels to the German
capitalists in
1894.[5] And we say: “Shoot first, Krushevans and Stolypins, Orlovs and
Romanovs!” Our task is to help the working class and the peasantry to
crush the Black-Hundred autocracy when it hurls itself upon us of its
own accord.

Therefore—nopremature calls for an insurrection! No solemn
manifestos to the people. No pronunciamentos, no
“proclamations”. The storm is bearing down on us of its own
accord. There is no need of sabre-rattling.

Wemust get our weapons ready—in the literal and in the
figurative sense. First of all, and above all, we must train a solid army of the
proletariat, conscious of its purpose and strong in resolve. We must increase
tenfold our work of agitation and organisation among the peasants— among
those who are starving in the villages and among those who last autumn sent
their sons to serve in the army, sons who experienced the great year of
revolution. We must tear down all the ideological blinds and screens concealing
the revolution, put an end to all doubts and vacillation.
We must say simply and calmly, in the plainest and most popular form,
as loudly and distinctly as possible:
a struggle is inevitable. The proletariat will accept battle. The proletariat
will sacrifice everything, will throw all its forces into the fight for
freedom. Let the ruined peasantry, let the soldiers and sailors know that the
fate of Russian freedom is about to be decided.